Monday, November 12, 2012

Nice Calls!

I did a pre-election Sunday Question asking for predictions. Some of them were excellent! If Nate Silver can be a big star for calling 50 of 50 states, in my view my commenters deserve at least a little Plain Blog stardom...so here's the best calls from that thread.

Curtis nailed the 332 to 206; so did one anonymous commenter, and William Ockham, and "merrily row." Best predictions on that? Brendan Garbee said:
a good way to tell if you're a liberal is if you wanted to write that you're using Drew Linzer's model to say 332 electoral votes for Obama, but you hesitate because of how confidently the Romney campaign is howling (minus any data) that Rom is going to win by a landslide. What if they're right and liberals actually can never ever win?
Indeed -- liberal commenters generally picked Obama to win, but more were pessimists, putting Florida and in several cases one or more other state, in Romney's column; none of them went optimistic by adding not only Florida but also North Carolina.

And Jeff said:
I predict that a lot of people who were hearing from Fox News, just days ago, about Romney's likely 400-EV landslide will be wondering what could have gone so wrong. And to find out, they will turn to the one source they know they can trust: Fox News.
On Senate seats, Lester Freamon nailed it:  "Dems pick up MA, IN, and ME, GOP picks up NE. Net D+2." He also had the national vote as a 3 point win for Obama, which looks pretty good right now -- it's at 2.7, but reporters are that the uncounted votes remaining are likely to favor Democrats.

We still don't know how the House will turn out yet, but most likely it will be 234-201. Closest call? Erik M. went with "about 200" seats -- not bad!

Commenters generally were correct about the marriage ballot measures they discussed, but no one called a clean sweep. And there are several other nice calls on other races; click over to see them all. Including those who got things wrong, of course; no need to talk about those.

Thanks to everyone who participated! I had fun reading them.

4 comments:

  1. I am very happy that my prediction was overly pessimistic.

    It was a historic night for Dems and women candidates in my state (NH). Dems swept the US House races, creating the nation's first all-female Congressional delegation (Shaheen, Ayotte, Kuster, Shea-Porter). Maggie Hassan (Democrat) was elected governor. And state Democrats won back over 100 seats to take control of the State House (the speaker will likely be a woman). And they won back 6 State Senate seats to get to a 13-11 deficit, with a long-shot chance of reversing that margin if recounts come through (in which case the Senate President will be a woman).

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  2. Thanks for the shout. One thing I noticed is that over at 538, the 332-206 remained the single most likely outcome in his simulations from September when Obama was riding high after the conventions, through the time when Romney made it a 60/40 proposition after the first debate.

    Plus, though I live now in San Antonio, my cell phone retains my Tallahassee number from a few years ago, so I did almost all of my Obama phone banking in Florida where I could pose as a local. So that made me a little more optimistic about Florida's prospects.

    And I am glad the pre-K for SA passed, too! First issue of the 2014 Perry-Castro showdown!

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  3. Hey Jonathan,

    I just read through a few months of your blog and really like what you're doing. I thought you might like to check out mine as well.
    http://independentrepmovement.blogspot.com/

    Keep up the good work!

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  4. I saw that 538 had Obama's likely EV at something like 309 -- between VA and FL. So I went with 332 in my department prediction contest which is not a betting pool, and 303 in my campus' watch party contest. So I looked brilliant to my students on election night AND won the prediction contest which is not a betting pool.

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